Abstract

Maggie O’Sullivan’s work has often been linked to the concept of shamanism, through her works’ own declared interest in it as well as by commentators. Nevertheless the application of this concept constructs a view of the work as somewhat ‘othered’ in a way that might undermine a fully-politicised and contextualised reading of her poetry.

This essay begins with a reading of the poem ‘Busk, Pierce’ from States of Emergency (1987) as a staging post for these concerns. Offering a close-reading of the text, taking into account the key features of O’Sullivan’s style (complex visual layout, sonic and rhythmic complexity, semantic density and use of neologism), the reading leads to a consideration of the collaged inclusion of a diagram from Claude Levi-Strauss’ structuralist work on myth from his work Structural Anthropology. Speculating on the significance of this figure in the text the essay shifts to a discussion of Levi-Strauss’ work on shamanism, crucially suggesting that O’Sullivan’s use of language may be seen as an attempt to redirect the thought of both reader and writer by giving expression to ‘states of emergency’: emotional experiences of alienating circumstances. It is this function that, the piece argues, gives O’Sullivan’s work its political charge.

The essay also considers O’Sullivan’s poetics within the context of the British reception of North American Language Poetry, proposing a link in the relationship between language use and politics proposed by some members of that movement and O’Sullivan’s work. The article uses EXCLA (1993) – O’Sullivan’s collaboration with Language poet Bruce Andrews – as a focus for these concerns, using comments O’Sullivan made in an interview conducted with the author in 1999. It will be argued, through close reading, that this collaboration demonstrates a direct identification between the poetics of Language Poetry and that of British Linguistically Innovative Poetry; illuminating the concerns of both writers, and, by extension, the contexts from which they emerge. The piece also reflects on O’Sullivan’s poetics text ‘riverrunning (realisations’, dedicated to Language Poet Charles Bernstein.